Tree Species Composition and Forest Stratification along the Gradients in the Dry Deciduous Forests of Godavari Valley, Telangana, India

It is important to understand the tree species composition, abundance, species diversity and stratification in tropical dry deciduous forests that are under threat. A quadrat study was attempted in the dry deciduous forests along the ecological gradients in the Godavari Valley of northern Telangana, India. The study records the presence of 110 flowering plant taxa belonging to 82 genera and 37 families in 120 sampled plots, and there was enumeration of 15,192 individuals of ≥10 cm girth at breast height. Tectona grandis (teak) is the principal forest cover component in the region, which often formed pure stands in Adilabad and, to some extent, in Nizamabad districts. Further down to the Warangal district, teak was gradually replaced by Terminalia alata. Twenty tree species were found dominant at one place to the other, and the top 10 dominant taxa have shared nearly 41% of the total density of the forest cover. The tree relative density ranged from 0.007% to 20.84%. The values of Importance Value Index were between 0.245 (12 spp. including some exotics) and 32.6 (teak). These baseline data help to know the change detection along the gradients in the tropical forest ecosystem of a major river valley in the region and the drivers of change

Purging of untrustworthy recommendations from a grid

In grid computing, trust has massive significance. There is lot of research to propose various models in providing trusted resource sharing mechanisms. The trust is a belief or perception that various researchers have tried to correlate with some computational model. Trust on any entity can be direct or indirect. Direct trust is the impact of either first impression over the entity or acquired during some direct interaction. Indirect trust is the trust may be due to either reputation gained or recommendations received from various recommenders of a particular domain in a grid or any other domain outside that grid or outside that grid itself. Unfortunately, malicious indirect trust leads to the misuse of valuable resources of the grid. This paper proposes the mechanism of identifying and purging the untrustworthy recommendations in the grid environment. Through the obtained results, we show the way of purging of untrustworthy entities.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table published by IJNGN journal; International Journal of Next-Generation Networks (IJNGN) Vol.3, No.4, December 201

Screening of the Ethnobotanicals against MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines

The present study aims to investigate the therapeutic properties of a library of the medicinal plants for their potential anticancer activity against breast cancer cells. The viability of MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 breast cancer cells was determined by MTT and trypan blue exclusion assays. The cellular cytotoxicity and the levels of cytosolic enzyme Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) were measured by assessing µmoles of NADH/well/min. Additionally DNA laddering and FACS analysis was done to further investigate the nature of cell death in these cells. Out of the tested plants, only Abrus precatorius L. extract showed a very significant cytotoxic activity on both cell lines. Trypan-blue assay showed the cell viability was significantly decreased in a dose dependant manner in both cell lines after 48 h of treatment. On the other hand, LDH activities in the cultured media were significantly elevated in both cell lines in a dose dependant manner as compared to the control. A prominent DNA laddering pattern in agarose gel was seen, which is an important hallmark of apoptosis. FACS analysis confirmed the apoptosis by the appearance of Sub G0/G1 peak in treated cells as compared to the control. This analysis will facilitate the use of traditional medicine in cancer treatment